In Protest, Defiance, and Resistance, Gilly Carr, Paul Sanders, and Louise Willmot examine nonmilitary resistance against the German occupiers of the Channel Islands during the Second World War. In the summer of 1940, as Britain prepared for its “finest hour,” an entirely different experience awaited the residents of the Channel Islands. Occupied for close to five years (longer than was much of Europe), Channel Islanders struggled with the moral choices that occupation created. Tens of thousands were evacuated in 1940. Most of those left behind simply bided their time and waited for liberation, but some actively or passively collaborated with the Nazi authorities, while others (on occasion the same individuals) participated in small acts of nonmilitary resistance. Carr, Sanders, and Willmot explore some of these acts of resistance in a thematic way through the use of archival sources, survivor testimony, correspondence, and newspaper clippings that have come to light as part of the Frank Falla files, a newfound resistance archive, discovered in 2010, that was hidden in a wardrobe for more than forty years.

While much attention has been given to the more controversial “collaborationist” aspects of the Channel Islands' war, historians have done little study of resistance in the islands largely because, as the authors state, there has been “insufficient evidence of it to warrant their attention” (1). With this book they seek to overcome this shortfall. Many of the acts of resistance detailed in the book are small acts: symbolic resistance such as the wearing of red, white, and blue (22–27), listening to the BBC on a crystal radio set (87), and petty thefts or acts of vandalism (216–18). Despite being seemingly minor acts, the consequences for such actions could be as severe as those experienced by their more celebrated continental counterparts: that Louisa Gould, caught sheltering a Russian slave worker (194–96), and James Houillebeq, arrested with a German pistol in May 1944 (218–19), both died in Nazi custody in 1945 demonstrates the seriousness of this kind of resistance in the eyes of the occupier.

The book appears to be a labor of love for the three historians involved, each contributing chapters suited to their particular academic strengths. Carr's chapters on material culture and memory, Sanders' chapters on governmental and economic resistance, and Willmot's chapters on humanitarian and women's resistance coalesce nicely into a comprehensive exploration. Although each has a particular writing style, both the materials and the authors' approach to them fit together extremely well. Carr, Sanders, and Willmot each use the terms “protest,” “defiance,” and “resistance” independently, but admit that many of the acts overlap. The V-sign campaign, for example, through which Islanders demonstrated against occupation by either wearing V signs or daubing walls and signs with the symbol, can be considered an act of protest and an act of defiance depending on the stage of the occupation at which it occurred.

The book was written to fill a gap within the existing historiography, and for that reason its thematic approach will appeal more to an academic audience than to general readership. The need to condense differing acts of resistance into themes also resulted in a lot of overlap. The names and acts pertaining to the more well-known resisters, for example, appear in multiple chapters, and the authors are cognizant that this is the case (14).

Details of many of these acts of resistance also appear elsewhere (including in Carr and Sanders' other publications), which means that for those already familiar with Channel Island Occupation history some of the book will seem to cover well-trodden ground. The compilation of these stories into one volume, however, is indeed unique, and the publication of this book is both necessary and timely.

Protest, Defiance, and Resistance in the Channel Islands will undoubtedly appeal to academics with an interest in occupation history, Holocaust studies, and resistance studies, and would be a good choice for anyone with a particular interest in the history of the Channel Islands or Island studies in general. However, the appeal could be much broader. Over the past two decades, there has been a noticeable appreciation of the need to bring to light tangential “British” narratives of the Second World War. As Britons increasingly seek to nuance their understanding of Britain's World War II experience, moving away from the hegemonic “finest hour” narrative so dominant in popular conception over the last seventy years, the image of British subjects participating in acts of nonmilitary resistance against their Nazi occupiers is a striking one. Protest, Defiance, and Resistance does not simply fill in a gap in Channel Island or occupation historiography; it contributes to a more balanced and nuanced understanding of the multiple “British” experiences of the Second World War.